Monday 27 February 2023

I am hounded the moment I enter the classroom. My Year 8 were victorious in a ‘Beat the Teacher’ Sherlock Holmes challenge last week, and they are now wholly expectant of promised chocolate. Children don’t forget such things, however this morning I have. I will pay my debt but I first need to ensure that I’m complying with allergies, laws, and new school rules around food. Year 8’s disappointment quickly subsides as today they are filming a group task at various outside locations around RMS. Most pupils enjoy filming and editing, and the class respond really well to this challenge – they are all great pupils.

Before lunch, I find a colleague with a challenging family context, just to hear how it is going and to check in with them. Words are pretty limited for any of the really important moments in life, and I can only imagine what the colleague is going through, but it’s important that I hear from them, try to better understand what they’re experiencing, and offer the School’s support and my own to remind them that we’re here to help as needed.

In the Dining Hall, I sit with a couple of Year 11 pupils to check the levels of GCSE stress they are each experiencing – different, but mostly managed sensibly. I learn as much about how their friendship developed when they were both boarders, and it’s a lovely story to hear. Students in all schools mostly provide great support to one another, and there is a great deal of care and kindness throughout our community.

Tuesday 28 February 2023

First up today is a pre-school meeting with Desmond, a colleague who oversees overseas Trips (among many other things), to hear some of his challenges. It is revealing to hear more about the difficulties he has been experiencing post-Covid. One large school travel firm has let us down three times in recent months, most notably when a Vietnam trip had to be cancelled with only a couple of months’ notice because the operator had not booked the flights as contractually promised. Currently, there is a travel firm who says they can accommodate the previously agreed booking if we accept one small adjustment of the students sharing beds! How they can begin to think this might be acceptable is beyond me. Desmond’s understanding in part is that during the Lockdowns good staff left these organisations, and the same quantity or quality of experienced staff are not back yet, with all the subsequent consequences. In addition, there is a determination from the travel specialists to recover income previously lost due to Covid, and so all travel costs are greatly increasing, from a short coach trip down the road to long haul destinations. This makes every trip more expensive for parents.

Tuesday and Wednesday are two days of Pupil Leadership interviews in which I play a part alongside the Sixth Form leadership team in selecting our two Head Pupils and their Deputies who will lead our Pupil Leadership team over the coming twelve months. These are always especially rewarding days because the young adults here are exceptional and I will get to hear more about them, from them, of their views on our school, and about how we could improve our school (more on this below).

Over lunch, I meet with two governors and my predecessor as Head to select the recipient of a 100% Bursary award. Decisions are reached, but the truth is that it’s ethically complex to make decisions around transformative bursaries for a number of reasons:

• There are more great pupils than there are bursary awards.
• How do you choose one great 10 to 11-year-old pupil over another?
• How do you ensure that the family’s financial context is as stated?  Our bursaries are for families who could not otherwise afford an independent school education.
• What about the pupils who we have shown our wonderful school to, who have thrown themselves into the process, but who don’t win the award? Is it right to show them “What you could have won” as it were?

The final meeting of the day considers staffing with Sophia, our Academic Deputy. These are always complex decisions to reach too, and this is a follow-up meeting to a longer one with the Heads of School present – it takes time to get this right. As at most schools, our staffing costs are 70% of total costs at RMS. So there is only 30% of our income to cover everything else: rent, utilities, food, resources, investment in our facilities, etc. Every year at every school there are a number of departments that feel we could benefit pupils by employing an extra colleague, and some of these cases have legitimacy. But of course, we cannot simply add to the wage bill in this regard. One added complication at RMS (which we accept and work with, but that is nevertheless always a significant context) is that we pay more rent than most schools (over a million pounds a year for our beautiful grounds) and so everything else must be managed very carefully indeed. Our teacher-pupil ratio is lower than most independent schools (this is part of what our parents pay for), and we also wish to ensure that next year we are able to give all RMS staff a suitable pay increase that they deserve and that I feel is due to them.

Sophia and I talk through each of the departments, considering where investment could have the greatest impact on our students, where it could be delayed, and where there is no negotiation because a new staff member is simply required to cover the teaching. It’s a really tricky set of cost/benefit conversations, and we know that some departments will be disappointed. I am often reminded of Rafa Benitez’s short blanket metaphor, which is applicable to school spending as much as it is to football tactics: “If you cover your head, you have your feet cold, but if you cover your feet, you have your head cold.’ We can’t cover everywhere simultaneously – that’s not an option in any school I have known, and any sense that all independent schools are loaded isn’t based on the reality of life for the overwhelming majority of independent schools.

The Sixth Form, UCAS, and Careers Team give a superb evening talk to our parents on “Current State of the University and Careers Landscape”. It is a fluid landscape, fast-changing, and as always I am left with no small degree of admiration and appreciation for colleagues’ expertise in this area.

Wednesday 1 March 2023

It’s another day of Pupil Leadership Team interviews with Year 12 students. These interviews are joyous and really useful, as always. We hear what the students love about RMS, including lots of feedback on what we get right and the many opportunities here. “I feel comfortable and can be myself at school” was one of many really lovely lines we heard from incredible students.

We also ask Year 12, “If you could improve one thing about RMS what would it be?” And it is these answers that interest me most so what follows below are mostly answers to this question. Not all of these points are possible, or some may have a very particular context, but I share them with relevant colleagues noting that “at the very least we need to read, listen, and think about it all. They make very many really good points, and they know more than us from a pupil-centred point of view, which is what we’re about. Please think about this carefully, discuss it with your teams as appropriate, and decide which bits we can action and/or get onto SDP.” Here is just a sample of the suggestions from our wonderful Year 12 of ways we can further improve RMS…

Careers – “We still need more pathways for different careers and to broaden parents’ minds beyond university as the best next step”.

Charities – “Expand the Charities’ Committee to involve students across all year groups in the school”.

Current Affairs – “Little things go a long way – the form tutor playing the news prompts debate and understanding”.

DEI – While it was said by many to be an area in which we are greatly improving, there was a pupil who requested “more subject-specific diversity within the curriculum” and they are right.

Links with boys’ schools – “More interaction with boys’ schools, across all years”

Prize Days – “It always ends in upset: some win lots, others win none. I know that you bear this in mind, but make the winners win fewer prizes. Have more high-profile rewards over more than this one day”.

Ruspini (our Nursery) – “You should make more links between the Ruspini children and pupils in Years 7-9 because that would help the Years 7-9 see and contribute beyond their world, and connect to the larger school more.” They gave an e.g. of “Talented Y7-9 pupils having a short session with Ruspini to show off their skills as a ballerina, footballer, or gymnast” and then to answer Qs or do a little work with the nursery children.

Tutoring – “Have Years 10-11 in vertical forms like in Sixth Form.  This would reduce the intensity of these years and help with GCSEs”.

Vaping – “More and stronger education about its dangers”

Year 9 – “It’s a transitional time in many respects.  Pupils’ maturity is in very different places.  So, the school needs to integrate more across year groups, particularly to help Year 9.”

Well-Being – “Have more outdoor activities other than sports for students at lunchtime”.

One clear point that came across from the interviews was how much these students looked up to our Pupil Leadership teams when they were younger. Younger adolescents are heavily influenced by older adolescents (we know this from research), and the more schools can utilise this, the better for all students.

The day ends with Year 8 Parents’ Evening, and I am back to being an English teacher for a great set of pupils for most of the evening. A parent of a boarder catches me late on to thank us for “Phone free Wednesdays” in Harris House. All of our parents have appreciated the merits of Ms. Scullion’s fab initiative. The pupils are getting there too – it’s great for their well-being and the number of board games played and increased noise in the Common Room on Wednesdays is a testament to its success.

Thursday 2 March 2023

Ahead of the retirement of an incredible colleague, Mrs Brown, the next two days are focused on the first round of interviews for two new deputy heads for our prep school. Today it’s for the Pastoral and Operations Deputy role, a post for which we had received a lot of applicants, however I’m not going to go into detail here because sadly, and for a variety of different reasons, we didn’t feel that we had the right candidate for our school from the candidates in today and so chose to readvertise. The fit has to be right from all points of view.

The day ends with a wonderful evening’s music at our Chamber Concert. The pupils are extremely talented. Our Music Department across our Prep, Senior and Sixth Form is truly exceptional at present, with three very special individuals in Mrs. Bentham, Mr. Werner, and Ms. McNally-Mayne. Of course I enjoy the evening greatly, but I cannot help but think of Yeats’ line, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”. Inevitably, some day in the future this glorious triumvirate will break up as somebody moves on. All good things must pass. However, until that day comes I can end evenings by greatly enjoying Chamber Concerts and marvelling at what they have built here for our musicians at RMS.

Friday 3 March 2023

The first round of Academic Deputy interviews for our Prep School progress very well today, and we invite three great candidates back for the second round next week. I am excited by them all.

I phone a series of parents whose daughters will receive 100% bursaries at RMS from September. The independent sector should offer more transformative 100% bursaries and is doing so every year. Given our history, RMS should offer more transformative bursaries, and we have increased the number of pupils in receipt of these for each of the last four years, with numbers increasing by seven more pupils each year from September 2023. This is a very good thing. I know from past experience that these conversations, with families who simply could not begin to afford an independent education, will stay with me over the coming years as I see their daughters enrich our school and benefit from their time here as they grow and develop into individuals ready to shape their future and the future of society. It is more ethically complex than one might imagine to award transformative bursaries, and it does inevitably lead to some disappointment (as do Pupil Leadership selections and job interviews for Prep School deputies), but we absolutely must keep doing it and increasingly so each year.

Coincidentally, the week ends with a call with Richard from The Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation, a social mobility charity focused on harnessing the power of educational opportunities at independent schools to benefit young people who need them the most. The advantages of an independent education should not be the exclusive preserve of those born into privilege. And the increasing number of schools working with Springboard agree with this sentiment. Richard wants to see if we can make it work for another Springboard student to join us at RMS, and after hearing about her context I agree that we’ll work together to try to make this happen.

Monday 20 February 2023

Everything that my dad taught me was through analogies to football. I’m not exaggerating. That was his default method for raising three sons, occasionally complemented by a little co-curricular study of chess, cards, crosswords, and the gee-gees. It turns out, looking back, that there’s not a lot you can’t cover through study of and comparison with an aspect of the beautiful game. Ethics, morality, geography, history, mathematics, and global economics, obvs. Management and leadership, psychology, communication, subcultures, cultural homogenisation, geometry, and spatial awareness, natch. A short course on puns and profanity, politics and sociology, mental health, feminism, rhetoric, wit, and wisdom. Football can teach you the key points of all those topics in full. While the analogies became increasingly complex, my dad did a half-decent job of it because to this day I can remember his lessons for each of the above. And I can’t say the same about Mr Berne’s equally excellent GCSE Maths class.

Just like football, everything in a school is contingent; very little is true in itself.  Great tactical brains such as Jonathan Wilson can’t give you a simple explanation for Graham Potter’s struggles at Chelsea, and no (head)teacher can offer you a simple explanation for a school’s successes, stresses, culture, or figurative temperature at any point in time.  The schools that I have known have each possessed a quite different dynamic that was in part due to an inexplicable interplay of factors such as size of site, size of pupil roll, the school’s history, its finances, calendar management, Common Room demographics, staff culture, SLT culture, teacher engagement with research, relationships with the parent body, the geographical distance that a department is located from the centre of school, pupils’ experiences if they raise concerns, etc etc and so on.  These things, and many more, may each appear to be unrelated and even some insignificant but they are not: everything in a school is contingent and dependent on one another.

Anyway, it appears that I digress. Forgive me.

The second half of Hilary Term starts straightforward enough. (This, in itself, is enough to put a headteacher on edge, knowing that the challenges all remain craftily hidden so far). Monday for me included an appraisal with an exceptional professional, Vicky. She doesn’t truly realise how great she is and is yet to fully appreciate the difference that she could make as an advocate for Early Years’ education in our sector and region. My job in part is to help her to trust herself enough to see that there are many opportunities to make a real difference.

Lunch was lovely insofar as I joined a pair of Upper Sixth students and heard about half-term travels in India and trips to Oxford as motivation for a possible deferred university application. Envy isn’t the right word; it’s just always really nice to hear from young adults at a time when their independence is growing and, simultaneously, the possibilities for everything that their life could be are increasing. “I think about my future a lot”, one Sixth Former said to me recently. It’s an extremely precious, fertile, and quite delicate moment in a young person’s life, and one that we as adult teachers are extremely fortunate to be around.

Tuesday 21 February 2023

It’s almost certainly the single most rewarding thing in the world to know that your class of pupils are making great progress. My Year 8s have now moved on to considering whole-text questions for Hound of the Baskervilles such as the representation of female characters in the novel. They’re largely getting it too, and their “missing chapters” of the novel are a superb pastiche of Conan Doyle, (said their proud teacher).

I make myself late for a meeting with the landlords because I sit in Common Room during break to chat with and thank two colleagues who gave up five days of their half-term break to take our students to Valencia. Being only one week long, it’s probably not the best half-term for a trip so I am especially appreciative of their work. I mention my meeting with the landlords to these colleagues and I am asked how long before our Great Hall can reopen. It’s a fair question.

The meeting with our landlords, the MCF, is just a regular catch-up about the work being completed and the work not yet completed on our school buildings. On the positive side of things, millions of pounds are being spent on the site, and this is greatly appreciated. One consequence of this work is that our Great Hall is closed while repairs are being made to the roof. It’s taking too long, and I must stay patient while good reasons for this delay are given to me.

If I ever appear patient to anybody, I am probably doing a half-decent job of acting. Time has told me that I am not a patient man by nature; this is a fault of mine. I am “working towards” rather than “exceeding” any targets in the subject of Patience. In this instance of our Great Hall roof, I am the person who most often has to front up all the legitimate questions from pupils, staff, parents about the length of time regarding work undertaken on the Great Hall, and so I do quite well to perform the role of ‘Patience’ in our meeting.

Wednesday 22 February 2023

It is a week of lunches with prospective parents of students with offers for a place in Year 7. In many respects, these conversations are simply lovely – I begin to get to know children and families who we will work with over the next seven years. Next week I will be interviewing truly exceptional Year 12 pupils for our Pupil Leadership Team who I can remember as ten-year-olds visiting RMS for the first time with their parents six years ago. These meetings stay with me. They are important conversations too, because of greater import than my professional responsibility to recruit great pupils for RMS there is the moral responsibility to help ensure each student finds the right fit of school for her. Finding the right of school for your child is much more important the school’s reputation, how much you think it will impress your friends, or its ranking in a spurious league table.

We have a new Director of Admissions and Marketing joining us next week, Emma, and I have a further conversation with her this afternoon. We are planning two days of “speed dating” with international agents in March, at the British Boarding Schools’ Network – a highly regarded source of contacts, knowledge, and support in the sector. Pupils join us aged 2-18 at RMS, with multiple entry points, in both the day and boarding markets, and with flexi-, weekly, and full boarding on offer, so it is a complex job and a hugely important team that Emma will be leading for us.

Thursday 23 February 2023

December to February in schools is a time for preparing the budgets for the next academic year, and we are having a series of meetings wishing to get this right. In theory, the three pots of income for independent schools are those from investments, from lettings, and from parents’ fees. In reality, for all but the wealthiest 1% of schools, it is the latter pot that brings in almost all income. The largest costs for a school are staff salaries, every time, rightly and understandably. In a time of rising food and fuel costs, and a cost of living crisis, it’s a year that we need to get the balance between fees and salaries just right. In truth, both of these need to increase at RMS.

Midway through the day I upset somebody with what I had hoped was carefully expressed honesty. This is never what any of us wish for, however very occasionally you do have to call things out. I’m not sure it says good things about me, but sometimes I enjoy meetings that have a necessary and functional tension to them. It’s not something you wish to do often, but on rare occasions it is required in a situation.

There is a late afternoon Pastoral sub-committee with our governors. I do not doubt our Board are aware of the challenges facing children and young adults, and of the great work undertaken by dedicated adults who care for them in our boarding and school community. Pastoral work (which is the responsibility of everybody) is the most important work in schools. This sub-committee meeting is followed by an early evening Estates sub-committee meeting – how lucky am I today? Our governors are good though; I do not doubt they are aware of the challenges facing a large 100-year-old school site when we pay more than peer schools in rent every year.

I am very lucky with what the day’s end brings: our inaugural Cadogan House Rock Concert contains primary pupils rocking out to their covers of The White Stripes. What’s not to love about this? A fab end to my day.

Friday 24 February 2023

An early morning meeting with a great colleague and then one with an incredible pupil gets the day off to a great start. Lara in Year 12 is progressing in The Jeffrey Ahn, Jr. Fellowship, a US based competition that seeks to empower young artists to realise extraordinary independent projects. Lara is one of very many special RMS students, and visual arts are an area of great strength at RMS. I love hearing about Lara’s next work, which, like her last piece, intelligently addresses themes of memory and loss.

The day brings meetings with our DEI leads, and with a 100% bursary student, which cumulatively remind me that we are moving in the right direction as a school. Then there is a call with CAMHS about the well-being of a student, more budget discussions, and a series of meetings with Heads of School. Our four fantastic Heads of School at RMS are dedicated and talented colleagues – they work selflessly for what is best for their pupils and our school. To be idiomatic and mix metaphors, while they are not at the coalface anymore, they are certainly in the firing line insofar as they are each subject to criticism because of the responsibility of their position. It’s a job that requires broad shoulders, and I have a great team here.

Regardless of how demanding or tough any day in our school is, over the last year I am conscious and appreciative of two things:

• We are no longer running a school in a Covid context and with all the restrictions and complications that involved.  Oh, what a bloomin’ joy it is to no longer have to do that!
• I am so very fortunate to have a great team of Senior Leaders around me.  Great colleagues, working extremely hard, who are in it for the right reasons, and who are each growing in experience every day, week, month, year.  Our pupils, parents, staff, and I are all lucky to have them with us.

Monday 6^th February

I could begin my weekly posts misquoting Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short Blog, so I wrote a long one instead”. Apologies. My pieces are never finished, only abandoned. Apologies. Pieces and posts like the end of term in schools, with too much unfinished and more that has not been drafted and crafted with the time it deserves.

Three things I know about headship that this diary has already confirmed:

• the intensity of term time – it is a relentless brute
• while there is never enough time, sometimes the art of a head’s life is in learning when to slow down and take more time over an issue 
• if you were tasked with building education from scratch, you would neither start nor end the school year here, with terms as we have inherited them now.

I tell myself that I will make this week’s post a little shorter (Ha!), as time for this half-term is fast running out.

This week we are appointing a new second in department for English. It is a hugely important role for a major department. We are fortunate to have an extremely hardworking and dedicated HoD. But she needs a 2i/c who takes on almost as much leadership of the department as she does, who is also an exceptional teacher, and who in addition can provide a fresh perspective on how we do things. Yes, you’re right, that is a very tough ask. But it’s also a great role for somebody to take up.

My role in this interview process is watching the candidates in the classroom with the students. Always. Teaching is the most important part of any interview for a teacher. It’s the bit I’m most interested in seeing. Any fool can perform a good interview. Teach a great lesson and establish a relationship with students who you’ve never met before while two adults sit in to watch you – now you’re impressing me.

When I watch any interview lesson, I want to be excited, inspired, left feeling that “I really must do better in my own teaching”, because I’m witnessing something truly amazing here and our pupils are going to love learning from this incredible human. Today, in truth, I’m a little underwhelmed by some of the lessons I observe. Which is disappointing because we had a strong field on paper.

I do appreciate that interview lessons are never easy. They are artificial: you don’t know the students; you’re nervous; it’s a standalone lesson. And all of that I will happily take into account when I’m watching an interview lesson. But I need you to engage and stretch the pupils more than some of the lectures I sat in on today; too much teacher talk is not the way to impress me.

Underwhelmed and disappointed as I sometimes was, you only need to appoint one great person for any post.  And by Tuesday evening and the end of a two-day process, we think we may have found that person.  Fingers crossed for Team English. 

Aside from watching four lessons, the highlight of my day was ninety minutes of expert advice from Suzanne Rowse at BBSN on changes in the boarding market. This was a lecture I happily attended.

Tuesday 7^th February

I remind myself that I will make this week’s post a little shorter (Ha!), as time for this half-term is fast running out. 

By this stage of half-term, I pretty much always see some colleagues get over involved emotionally. Good colleagues, great colleagues, senior colleagues. When teachers and leaders invest so much into their jobs, some find it hard not to take things personally. They have given the last six weeks their all, they are exhausted, and we can lose balance and perspective over things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things when we’re simply shattered. The box of tissues in my office doesn’t lie, and it was empty before the end of this week.

One Head I worked with once told me, “The final fortnight of each half-term is a time to hold the ground you have taken, and not to open battles on any new fronts.”  Poor choice of a military metaphor aside, he had a point. If you were tasked with building education from scratch, you would neither start nor end the school year here, with the intensity of terms as we have inherited them now.

Wednesday 8^th February

On Tuesday evening, the Board at RMS heard an interview presentation from a colleague who was appointed our new Chair. Early Wednesday morning begins with a final fortnightly call with the outgoing Chair, a retired Head who stepped up to serve the school in an hour of need. I have always valued the support, advice, and challenge I have received from our governors, and have received particularly valued support from each of the Chairs of Governors I have worked with. Once a fortnight, I inform them of all of the serious and important stuff that I can’t share with many others. It’s more coaching than therapy that you receive on these calls, but there can also be something cathartic in unburdening the issues of a school community to a Chair.

In the remainder of the day, I have lovely meetings with incredibly dedicated students who have worked hard to receive offers from Cambridge, with wonderful former parents who wish to donate money to students requiring pastoral support, and with a great group of new Gap students at RMS. That plus the usual business with Heads of School and our Director of Sport.

I finish my marking in the evening, which always feels good, but I am by now fully aware that I will not get to finish all that I would like completed by Friday. This is fine in some respects as in part that is what the coming half-term is for – catching up on a bit of work and catching up on a bit of family time and rest. I will happily take that from next week.

Thursday 9^th February

A great colleague chatting about her career comes to Open Door first thing – this type of conversation is a privilege of my job. Then I watch a lesson, teach a class, attend an accommodation committee meeting, and have an afternoon of line management meetings before getting along to Year 13 Parents’ Evening. One parent of a student who has had a tough time takes me into the Head of Sixth Form’s office to tell me in front of her just how incredible she is. He is right, and I do already know how lucky I am to have her in the team, but it is nonetheless really lovely to see Clare hear me hear this.

Friday 10^th February

It is House Day in Cadogan House. This is a day that our Prep School pupils absolutely love. They dress up in House colours as characters from films such as Minions or Totoro, and they bring in art, perform poems, dances, and songs, and have as much fun as a school day allows. My afternoon watching their sketches, acts and songs is a delight, an RMS Royal Variety Show performed by 4-11 year olds.

The day ends with a late after-school meeting with a parent for the second Friday in succession. Behind the scenes, my PA has made both of these meetings a success. The support that a headteacher receives from a PA is in many ways more important than that received from the Chair of Governors. No headteacher’s job could be successful without the daily, unfailing, confidential support and counsel of a great PA. I walk home to my real family thankful for the support of all of the key players in my work ‘family’, but in particular once again knowing how lucky I am to be able to rely on the absolute discretion and great judgement of my PA. She deserves a week off from me.

Monday 30th January

The hours of a working week in term time, in themselves, don’t begin to cover all that a teacher or headteacher needs to do and does.  I’m not complaining about this.  Personally, I enjoy the intensity and focus required during the weeks of term time.  For me, this year, Sundays are important days that allow me to prepare myself for and to tee up the week ahead.  I don’t expect this of others, of course.  Doing or thinking about work might be the last thing a colleague needs on a Sunday, and that’s fine.  I trust the adults that I work with each to manage their hours, their downtime, their marking, checking of emails, etc as best suits them at that stage or moment in their life. 

How you manage term time changes from person to person, and over the course of a working life.  I know teachers who arrive very early each morning, teachers that work (possibly too) late in evenings after children are in bed, and my younger brother does most of his planning and prep for the next week on a Saturday before the football begins.  Each to their own. There will be weeks in each term when a teacher/Head has gone beyond their healthy boundaries for that week and needs a weekend to switch off, in which case they should.  It’s hugely important to check-in with yourself and see if you need time to rest, time outdoors, space to play, or just catch up with chores and hopefully sleep.   

Very occasionally (and I do mean that), before I was a Headteacher, I have worked alongside colleagues who tried to manage on the barest minimum of absolutely necessary work of an evening, at weekends, and outside of term time, i.e. tried not to be working outside the working day at all, wherever possible.  From what I’ve seen, that’s when a teacher ends up in trouble, metaphorically speaking.  Perhaps they have already fallen out of love with the job, temporarily at least.  Those colleagues I worked with in that context weren’t enjoying the best experiences with their students and weren’t enjoying their teaching.  I don’t know how you could do the job that way.  The regular hours of a working week in term time don’t begin to cover all that a dedicated teacher/headteacher does and needs to do, but how you manage those extra hours is entirely up to you. 

Some of the cliches about teaching are true.  It is an incredibly rewarding profession, working with children and young adults, and can be a true vocation.  But it is very demanding.

Sundays are important to me this year because alongside using some of the hours on Sundays to get plans and actions for the coming week lined up, I also use Sundays to prepare for my Year 8 lessons.  I need to know that the marking, planning, prepping of resources for the students is done because, as the last couple of weeks have shown, there are times when things unexpectedly drop into a Head’s week that are simultaneously both serious and important enough to mean that all the intentions and scenario planning that has taken place have to be placed to one side, delegated, rearranged or postponed, because other things now need to happen.  In those weeks, adaptability and experience trumps planning.  Every time.  But my Year 8s still deserve to be taught decent lessons, and so Sundays are important for them too.

Monday morning periods 1 and 2 this week was a decent lesson.  My class are responding better to the challenges of Sherlock Holmes and to Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 prose than they did to Romeo and Juliet, and Shakespeare’s blank verse from 1507.

The curriculum of a school always needs reviewing in one way or another.  At the moment, the DfE are defunding BTECs, which has prompted our thinking.  We always need to consider whether our curriculum has the right range, variety and stretch for our students, whether there are new subjects that should be considered, and which subjects we couldn’t guarantee will still be there in 3-5 years.  I meet with half a dozen colleagues today to share research and thoughts.  Mostly, these kind of discussions don’t lead to change, and certainly not straight away; it is more a case of considering what is coming up over the horizon, but you always need to be prepared, to have the proactively open mind of “What is best for our pupils in the coming years?”

After school, I join colleagues in Cadogan House for a ‘Book Look’, a review of learning over a period of time which, in many ways, is better than the impression of learning that you get from watching a single lesson.  I can see pupils’ understanding in mathematics improving, errors being corrected (mostly), and the quality of the pupils’ writing all improving over time.  I’m not putting weight on any one piece of work but seeing the development of learning over half a school year.  It’s lovely to listen in on colleagues’ conversations, to hear them comparing, contrasting, and reflecting on their own practice.  Most teachers are wonderfully dedicated professionals.

Tuesday 31^st January

In the middle of the day, a pupil calmly brings me a note that requires immediate investigation.  The pupil does this calmly, and I thank them for bringing something to my attention.  I check their well-being and promise to look into it.  I share only the facts and ask an experienced colleague to gather more evidence and then report back.  It is another one of those moments when you are conscious that the week could be changing gear.

As Head there are occasions when pupils, colleagues, or parents come into your office showing great distress, expressing strong emotions, clearly deeply upset and, sometimes, wanting immediate action to be taken against another person. I need to listen carefully, be understanding, to care and to show that I care. But I can’t ever jump to any conclusions when I hear one side of a story, no matter how strong a person expresses their views. Even inside my mind, I need to keep a tight lid on my emotional response so as not to prejudice my thinking. This isn’t necessarily easy when, for example, a hard-working colleague or parent is in tears, but for every story, there are always multiple viewpoints. A person’s motivations don’t always emerge at first, are possibly actively being hidden. There can be conflicting emotions and unconscious factors at play. Occasionally, there is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree revolution in my understanding of a situation from what was first presented to me; often, there is movement.

Later that day, my colleague tells me that it is an indication of a good culture in our school that pupils feel they can share concerns that they have, or make disclosures, to tutors, teachers, Heads of Year, or directly to me.  This has some truth to it.  It is extremely difficult for a pupil to come forwards and question the actions or views of a trusted adult, for example a parent or a teacher.  We’ll see what comes of the concerns raised by these pupils (because by now they are plural). 

The rest of the day is a series of meetings, two with parents, five with colleagues. As term progresses and the Diary gets increasingly busy, I am highly conscious of too much time being spent in my office, and of the need to get out and around school more.  My PA and I always keep this in mind, but sometimes, often in the final fortnight of a term, events and the diary gang up and conspire against us.

Wednesday 1^st February

There is an early morning meeting with our Head of Sixth Form and Academic Deputy to discuss a pupil who is going through a very tough time. It is a sensitive matter, but one that my colleagues have investigated and researched thoroughly.  They are currently supporting a couple of delicate matters with students who have significant contexts.  I listen carefully, and then ask questions that try to add value to their thinking, but my admiration for both is immense.  Witnessing a senior team grow in experience, empathy, and expand their range of possible solutions to complex issues has been one rewarding aspect of this year.  We are not at our peak as a team in any respect, most of the SLT here have been in their current position for fewer than three years (though some in an SLT position for longer), but they are very good people working extremely hard for our school.  Seeing them grow in challenging situations is satisfying and rewarding.

There are a couple of members of the Senior School SLT who are comparatively new to school leadership, and who have the potential to take on larger, whole-school roles. I have spent the year thinking about ways we can keep developing them, and I meet with one of these colleagues today to begin to explore with her how we can grow her role for September 2023.

The Whole School SLT meeting involves colleagues feeding back on how we can evolve with Google, email and our school calendar.  I hear about what can’t be done or what will be problematic and difficult.  I am pleased to hear honest, open discussion.  As a Head of English, an Academic Deputy, and now headteacher, I have often said “I am happy for you to come into my office say ‘I tried X in order to achieve Y, but it hasn’t worked.  In fact, it’s all gone horribly wrong’.  I want that honesty, very much so.  If everybody felt comfortable enough to hold up their hands when something has gone wrong or isn’t working, that would be wonderful.  Of course, that isn’t always the case, and my job is to help create the culture where more people feel that is possible.

A lot of my time in February is focused on the next academic year.  The day ends with four colleagues meeting to discuss staffing needs as we now have option choices in for next year’s Year 12 (A Level) and 10 (GCSE).  It’s always a changing picture at this stage of the year, but the meeting is a productive one, again because good work had been done in advance.

Thursday 2^nd February

Much of the morning is spent at a local school where I am a governor, having oversight of their work supporting an ECT (Early Career Teacher).  As is so very often the case, it is a joy hearing teachers reflecting on how they are supporting colleagues, or ways in which they are being supported.  Similarly, observing teachers and then hearing back from them about the lesson is just a pleasure.  This particular ECT is in her second year, in a different school to her first year where she felt far less well supported, and from all I can see she is flourishing. 

The final part of the morning is a confidential chat with the headteacher of this school.  The idea that being a Head is a lonely job is not one I subscribe to, but there are times when you  have to carry a lot of peoples’ concerns around with you and it is notable that whenever you get two Heads together, with a Chatham House Rule understanding, conversation flows as problems are shared and halved and as we get a chance to unburden ourselves a little from things that have been necessarily bottled up in our workplace.

Something similar possibly happens at the end of the day at RMS for parents of Year 11 pupils and their teachers at our Parents’ Evening.  I lose count of the number of parents who tell me how incredibly useful the evening has been for them, how wonderful our teachers are, and how much parents appreciate hearing from teachers and their daughters, and being part of that conversation, as we all work together to support the students in achieving their best possible GCSE results.  There is something beneficial for humans in us seeing ‘our’ problems and issues not as ours alone, but as part of a larger social context – it is reassuring and helpful to us all.

Friday 3^rd February

An early morning walk of the campus with our legendary groundsman Billy Lees is always a pleasure.  Billy is in his fourth decade at the school, can name each of the thousands of trees he has planted on our site, and always has a new project on the go. We talk about life, the universe, and his team, agreeing on many points and ending by restating our view that neither of us “can be doing with liars”.  Anything else we can deal with, anybody who holds up their hands for any error, but when a teammate is lying to you then you don’t know where you are with them, and that’s when you’ve got real problems.

I meet with the second colleague from Senior School SLT whose role I would like to see growing next year. Helen is an Assistant Head with a Senior School focus who I would like to take on whole-school responsibilities next year. Culturally, she is just what I wish for in her view of pupils, learning, teachers, and staff development and well-being. She is a great colleague who we are lucky to have with us. We share some thoughts, and then decide to take half-term to process before we progress our conversation.

Late afternoon I meet with our Head of Prep, Melanie, who has had a challenging week too. Melanie is in her second year as headteacher at RMS, learning the role wonderfully but inevitably still facing some challenges for the first time. “There must be something in the water” she says.  I reassure her that the very experienced Head of another school yesterday was saying much the same, and it’s more that it’s the penultimate week of a busy half-term than anything else.

The week ends positively with a Friday evening meeting with parents that we had feared was going to be difficult, but that was very productive.  My PA, Sharon, is no small part in its success.  She is a key member of the team here, a brilliant colleague who will doubtless pop up in this Blog again, and who is an often unseen presence behind most everything that works well in relation to the Headteacher at RMS.